¥€$U$ IS WATCHING YOU BY PAWEŁ JASZCZUK

Jesus. God who became human. The central figure of Christianity. For the majority of christians the essence of Jesus is as the son of God and his existence is consubstantial to the Father. ¥€$U$ is the latest photo series by Paweł Jaszczuk. Its leitmotif is the representation of Christ in contemporary pop-culture. Jesus and ¥€$U$. What is the difference here? The simple answer is: everything. Nowadays, Jesus is more a symbolic religious figure than he is a real person. From a cultural point of view he might be considered as a metaphorical figure – the personification of all virtues, the master figure. ¥ € $ U $ is a reversal of religious symbolic order an aberration of a religious order. He brings God to Earth.Paweł Jaszczuk has spent almost a decade of his life abroad, sharing this time between Australia and Japan. He came back to Poland in 2012. The contrast and a contradiction of Christ from the New Testament and his pop-culture representation perfectly reflects the author’s shock upon returning to his homeland, where he again encountered “folk religiosity”. An accidentally found pocket knife in a shape of a cross became an inspiration for further investigation. The result is a whole photo-series. Their ambiguity is perfectly expressed by the title – ¥ € $ U $ – in which spirituality is mixed with commerce.